Screens: Universal Television
Smash Found A Peanut
The rewatch reaches the potentially fatal end of Season 1, and our commentators' emotions are as mixed as smoothie ingredients.
Our Players
The Talk
We made it to Boston! I feel weirdly invested, even the second time through! I was surprised how quickly it all went. I've said this in past installments, but Smash really packed a lot into its short seasons. But the biggest surprise for me on this rewatch continues to be how I don't hate Karen. I am not a crackpot! Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% Team Ivy in terms of casting, but I kept waiting for the moment I start hating the character or Kat McPhee's performance and I just...don't. I feel like the show imposed a lot on her (Team Ivy/Team Karen to begin with), and when it was happening live it was easy to get wrapped up in that on social media and whatnot, but she's...sort of okay. I remember her being much dumber, but for example it's Bobby who says "It's Karen's first tech!" Which is absurd, of course it isn't (her first pre-Broadway tech, yes), but she never says that it is or acts like it is, someone else does. There's also a brief run of episodes here where Karen and Ivy are actually friends, and McPhee and Hilty have great chemistry; I love watching them together. Have you come around at all?
I still pretty much hate her. But I will say that she's not the most annoying character in this run of episodes: nothing makes Karen look better than putting her up against Rebecca Duvall. As I wrote about her role on The Slap, Uma Thurman has never really impressed me as an actor, and even though here she's supposed to be playing a diva who doesn't actually know what she's doing and slows things down with her stupid ideas and basic incompetence, knowing that the purpose of the Rebecca character is to show the audience how much more extraordinary even a so-so Broadway performer like Karen is compared to coddled TV and movie stars doesn't make her less irritating to watch. I am curious to know, though, whether you think the producers maybe leaned on that point a little heavily.
I wish they had made Rebecca less incompetent. That's less a complaint about the performance for me, and more one about the writing, and it goes back to something I said in our first conversation about finding the real story more interesting. What if Rebecca really could sing, but was terrified of doing it in front of a live audience eight times a week? I just like the nuance there. But what do I know, I don't write for network TV. I get that huge stars don't have to audition, but come on, no one thought of a crafty way to find out if she could sing before having her do so in front of the entire company?
Not even Derek? "Hey, come in for a work session with the music director."
There's one terrific scene where she sits down with the creative team and it's clear that all her diva behavior was masking her fears. She's totally reasonable, and she asks them not to baby or bullshit her. It's great, and it's real; I've seen stars do that when no one's watching. But in the next episode she goes right back to being loony tunes.
It's definitely in these last five episodes that the soapiness of the series really starts to bubble out of control. You're right: that scene where Rebecca makes reasonable requests about tweaking the Marilyn role so that she's better able to play it gives a sense of how she got to be successful as an actor in the first place -- knowing her limitations and confidently working within them -- but then she has to resume acting crazy so that there's a pretext for Derek to be more hands-on in his direction, literally. Because things were going well with Derek and Ivy, and I guess that's boring to watch? Derek's cheating is the first contrived plot event, and leads directly to the next: Ivy being so bummed out about it that she ends up on a bar stool next to Dev and they end up sleeping together. Given the Derek we've come to know, I could almost believe him boning Rebecca just because she's there, and famous; doing it because she's so irritating that he can't think of any other way to make her pay attention to him, I buy less.
Yeah, none of that rang true, including Rebecca having any interest in Derek. And you'd think Derek, of all people, would be better at having affairs than everyone else on this show. One last question about Rebecca, which will be relevant later: she gives Karen a whole bunch of clothes. As I am a boy who doesn't understand the ways of women's garments. Are Uma Thurman and Kat McPhee even remotely the same size? (Linda even comments later that Uma is a foot taller.)
I would believe that they can probably wear around the same size casual clothes: they're both tall and thin, and they can probably mask any gapping or slouchiness with scarves, of which everyone on this show has about a million. I figured the issue with costumes is that vintage styles are more closely fitted to the body than a $200 t-shirt or jeggings or whatever else Rebecca was getting in swag.
Well, there are a lot of issues with the costumes, but I don't want to be pedantic...yet. You mentioned Dev, so can we talk about Dev? Because Jesus, what an asshole! I think this is part of why I like Karen better this time around. Sure, he's got some problems but he just has no regard for her life or her career. He was so supportive at the beginning but he seems to have been into the idea of dating an actress without ever having thought about what it meant to actually work as one. She repeatedly asks him what's going on, he refuses to tell her, and then he gets mad at her when she doesn't know what's going on. Worst! And he shows up at rehearsal and acts all put out when she can't spend time with him. She's working! What if she showed up at your office and stared at you at your desk?
Yeah, it's dumb. This run of episodes also shows up how little these two characters have in common to the point where you're kind of surprised they've stayed together as long as they have. He absolutely should have told her about his work problems any of the 500 times she directly asked about them, but in his SLIGHT DEFENSE, I don't get the sense that she really cares about his job or understands what he even does. My prejudice against her and my low opinion of her political knowledge, however, in no way excuse his almost cheating on her with one woman he finds easier to talk to than Karen, and fully cheating on her with another woman who's Karen except better.
Fair. Then of course there's maybe Karen's most infamous, t-shirtworthy moment. When it aired, Karen got A LOT of shit for "I'm in tech"...
...but put it in context. Tech rehearsals are twelve-hour days for the actors (more for the designers, stage managers -- especially poor Linda, who has no assistants! -- and crew), during which they're either running numbers over and over again or standing around doing nothing but unable to actually sit down and relax because they're lighting you or whatever. You go home, sleep for a few hours, then go back to the theater. You live there. On Broadway, tech can last two weeks or more, and the unions let you go for twelve days without a day off. It's not exactly working in the mines, but it is mind-numbing and exhausting at best, stressful and dangerous if you're in a Spider-Man situation. The least realistic thing about this scene to me is that Dev can take Karen out for a nice dinner. This is not a week to be making huge life decisions. Dev, as usual, is only thinking about himself. Plus the last conversation they had in New York was a fight and suddenly he's proposing? Under the circumstances, I don't really blame Karen for sputtering. Not that I blame Dev for reacting poorly to it either.
We can't move on from the topic of Dev, however, without mentioning the Bollywood number. Apart from his sleeping with Ivy, that piece is the only thing I remembered about Dev from all of Season 1, and when I saw it coming I braced myself for cringing...and then ended up being completely delighted by it.
Oh I'm so glad to hear you say that, because if I haven't lost all credibility with our readers by defending Karen so much, here's where I'm going to. Deep dark confession time. I've been using iTunes since 2001 (stay with me, there's a point coming), and I've successfully transferred my library for computer to computer so my play counts are pretty accurate. "A Thousand And One Nights," despite being just over two years old, is the fourth most-played song I own. I am not even slightly sorry about this. It's just amazing for the gym. Or anywhere. Not sorry.
Marc Shaiman wrote a great blog post after Smash ended in which he went through song by song, and he explained that they really wanted to write something for Dev, that the set was supposed to have lots of Bollywood images on it, and the whole cast was supposed to be there getting really drunk. Which would have been a better setup. Buuuuuut...it still would have been kind of offensive to have Karen dressed like this, no?
And why would Karen's fantasy include scenes she has zero knowledge of? And anyway isn't "A Thousand And One Nights" Persian, not Indian? Whatever, it's a great song, even if its context is less than ideal.
It's mostly a Persian story, but it has Indian elements, or so Wikipedia told me when I looked it up because I had the same thought! I won't lie: watching it, there was still part of me that thought the only reason they cast an Anglo-Indian actor as Karen's boyfriend was because several someones were like, "We could do a Bollywood number!" like Tom and Frank with the baseball number in Bombshell. But it's so irresistible that it kind of overcomes how essentially problematic it is. Raza Jaffrey 100% goes for it; he really can sing and dance and looks like he's having so much fun. I'm only human.
I'm so glad we agree on this. Justice for the Bollywood Number! Oh god, there's so much else, though. We haven't even gotten to Boston yet! Peanuts! Kale smoothies! The return of Michael Swift!
Speaking of "problematic." There's just so much that happens that's unforgivable, starting with THE SHOW IS STILL CALLED BOMBSHELL, as no real Broadway show would ever dare to try! Even less believable than that Rebecca could just coast into her casting without anyone's ever hearing her sing is the shock that strikes everyone when the suicide ending of the show doesn't land. Because I get that it would be a very boring show if there were a special two-part "all dress rehearsal" episode (...I'd watch it), but the way it happens on the show makes it seem like the first time anyone on the creative team has actually seen the ending is when it's playing in front of an audience. If this is the same ending the show's always had, why wasn't it an issue at the workshop? If it isn't, why not just go back to whatever that was?
And as for Michael Swift: this other bro who got cast as DiMaggio can just peace out of the show because he got a pilot? He doesn't have a contract?
HE WOULD HAVE A CONTRACT!! And an agent, also, so he wouldn't have to give notice himself in the most awkward way possible. But yeah, number of weeks' notice, period during which you cannot give it, etc. But whatever, soap opera, fine. Also the panic about the ending -- that's what previews are for. Like, that's literally the entire point. You don't have to fix it the next night. (It was clear that the workshop was just the first act, so that much I buy.)
I do love a lot of the stuff we see in the theater in Boston. I've said before that Smash may not get the details right but it almost always got the feeling right, and that's very true in these Boston episodes. It's weird that they covered another showtune, but kicking off the Boston sequence with "Another Op'nin', Another Show" (arranged to include bits of Bombshell songs), with a montage of load-in and tech and the company traveling, with the whole thing deflating at the end with an unexpected blackout and Derek screaming "Bloody hell" is just great. Sam gets a nice Chorus Line moment with his parents and Tom when he explains why he's a dancer. ("This is what theater is. It is joy one day and it's gone the next. It's like a religion, and I don't apologize for wanting to be a part of that.") I love the scenes of the ensemble hanging out in the hotel room blowing off steam, or gossiping about Rebecca. All of that rings really true. (If only real theaters had a free full bar in the lobby for everyone to just use during tech, though.)
On Sam's parents: did it seem to you like Sam's dad's disapproval of Sam for being a dancer was originally written as disapproval about Sam being gay? Because that's how the dad character struck me when we met him, and then it turns out he's just worried that Sam's going to tear a hammy and die without a 401K? That just seemed strange to me -- but then, maybe that, like the Rebecca Can't Handle The Pressure storyline, was there to underline how heroic Broadway actors really are.
Yeah, it read to me as the latter. Like with Leigh's speech to Ivy in "Workshop," and Karen to her parents, I thought these were things Rebeck and company really wanted an excuse to say. For all its faults, Smash sincerely loves Broadway and the people who make it, and I think they just wanted that voice heard. Maybe not, but that's how I read it. Weird for me not to be cynical....
Were you also so open-hearted about everyone in the company having their come-to-Jesus moment in church? ABOUT WHICH LET ME ALSO SAY that Karen's performance on that barnburner of a gospel number was the first time in the series I ever thought she was doing something special.
Nooooooope! And okay, she was good but why was she soloing in Sam's church??? What is this, Glee? Musical or not, I just don't buy any of those characters schlepping out to the Boston suburbs on a Sunday no matter how much they love Sam. Wasn't Bobby there? A world of no.
Speaking of "Don't Forget Me": can we agree that song stinks?
"When you sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone you love"? Get bent. It's so corny!
GAY GASP! No, we cannot!
OH NO, ARE WE BREAKING UP?!
I mean, I'll give you the lyrics are not good, Julia, but there's something about it. The melody is kind of perfect and I love the way it builds. And it's the best example yet of Smash being both about a musical and a musical itself. It's the finale to Bombshell, but for us it's really the first act finale, closing this chapter and leaving the audience wanting more. I remember so clearly watching it the first time and being angry that we had to wait for longer than a fifteen-minute intermission for Season 2.
I get the idea behind it, I just don't really feel that moved by it. But maybe that's just because it's Karen singing it; I might feel very differently about it next season....
I will say that I also got very wrapped up in that season finale episode, despite the super-overused "12 hours earlier" gimmick. Not just not knowing who'd end up playing Marilyn, but the very dramatic put-in rehearsal in which everyone rallies around Karen (then Ivy, then Karen again) and Tom and Julia fight, then make up, and pull the song out of their asses...it all leads up to "Don't Forget Me" in a way that I suspect the actual Marilyn story probably doesn't?
One quick thing I've been wondering about all season: Tara, as a viewer who knows a lot about theater but isn't in the business, I'm curious how all the inside-baseball cameos by non-actors played to you. Do you care that Michael Riedel (to name but one) is a real person or did you just wonder why that guy was yelling so much?
ha! They said his name so much that I was pretty sure he was probably real. And the rest, I think I recognized. I appreciated that they got specific with it. You're shooting in New York, with lots of opening-credits cast members who are for-real Broadway stars; why not include as many real personalities as you can?
True. I think they also wanted as much good will from the community as possible (Riedel definitely gave them a bunch of winking press in his column). The Broadway cred remains one of my favorite things about the show, not just in the location shooting, but in the casting. It's right up there with Law & Order and The Good Wife in Hey! It's That Guy! land, and just two years later I found myself spotting even more familiar faces. The terrible Marilyn who auditions before Karen in the pilot was Annaleigh Ashford, who just won a Tony on Sunday. James Monroe Inglehart, who won a Tony last year, is in the ensemble of Heaven On Earth. The replacement DiMaggio, Tony Yazbeck, was also a Tony nominee the other night. Zanuck (covered in rehearsal by Tom for no good reason) is played in Boston by Broadway vet Marc Kudisch, essentially in a cameo.
It's not like Smash discovered any of these people in obscurity. They've all been working for years; they're just who you get when you make this kind of show here. It's just great to see their work recognized and preserved when I suspect the network impulse could have been to cast the whole thing with American Idol alumni.
And just as Bombshell seems to be on the right track, as we end the season so much else is falling apart! Julia might be pregnant! Frank might never trust her again! Karen's achieving stardom just in time for her relationship with Dev to be tested like never before! AND IVY'S JUST TAKEN A WHOLE HANDFUL OF PILLLLLLLLLLZ! I can't wait to see how Theresa Rebeck writes her way out of all this in Season 2! ...Oh. Right.
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The Pedant's Guide To Smash
As we head into production, there's an awful lot more to nitpick on the realism front. As always: yes, I know it's just TV; no, I don't really care. In most cases, being more realistic would probably make the show worse. We're having fun here. That said, we've got so much to cover, this week I'm making a list.
- Shows at pretty much every level, but especially on Broadway, have a lot more staff than this. And I get it, TV shows have to hire actors to play them, and the audience doesn't care about the Company Manager, so it's fine, but that's who would be dealing with Rebecca's demands, and her housing in Boston, not Eileen and Ellis.
- Eileen only dials 7 digits on her desk phone, which hasn't worked in New York for well over a decade. (Hey, I never said I'd only be pedantic about theater.)
- Karen is 100% correct about how understudy rehearsal works, but does she have to explain it to us three times?
- Rebecca subtly (and not-so-subtly) undermining Karen is also totally real. I've seen it done. It's all very Mean Girls.
- Again with the staff: where are Linda's assistants?? She'd have two Assistant Stage Managers and a couple of Production Assistants too, and if anyone on her team would be making smoothies, it would be a PA. God bless Derek for coming to her rescue.
- Karen gets a (fake) text from one of Rebecca's assistants telling her that she's off from rehearsal because Julia's out. What? Why on earth would the bookwriter/lyricist's presence in rehearsal have anything to do with Karen's schedule? And regardless of what Karen was doing, if Rebecca is called, as her understudy, Karen would be called. And stage management would tell her to come and go. The whole thing is a setup but it's hard to buy that even Karen would fall for it.
- Okay, this is every TV show and movie ever, and I get it, Penn Station is ugly, but YOU CAN'T GET TO BOSTON FROM GRAND CENTRAL STATION!
- So I said above that a Broadway tech usually lasts two weeks. They actually say that Bombshell tech is two days. I guess it's not impossible; I've teched shows in less time, but not at this level and not at the pace we see them working! Any time before you bring in an audience is pure expense -- you're paying for everyone and everything with no ticket money coming in -- so a short tech fits with what we know about Eileen rushing everything, but two days doesn't seem plausible.
- ...especially if Derek is going to spend time focusing lights instead of directing. Again, I don't need to see the Lighting Designer, I just think it's weird to see Derek doing it.
- There's this weird thing where Rebecca insists on wearing gloves but then can't get them off in her quick change. Derek's solution to choreograph them being removed into the dance is clever, and pretty realistic, but also why not just rig them? Velcro exists for a reason.
- Another nice bit of realness: Derek giving notes to his assistant (played by the show's actual choreographer...and another of this year's Tony nominees, Josh Bergasse) to write down during previews.
- If I were in the audience at Bombshell, I would definitely be playing "Spot The Understudy!" all night. One look at Ivy in "Smash" and the game's afoot. Though do they have any coverage besides Marilyn? And who takes over Karen's role in the ensemble when she replaces Rebecca?
- Only because I mentioned it last week: this week Karen and Dev talked about meeting in London, so maybe they met during Karen's junior year abroad? That would clear up a lot about her timeline for me!
- Julia and Michael have an intense, emotional conversation standing center stage while he would be, if he were real, wearing a microphone. Come on, people, are you new?!
- (He's actually not wearing a mic for some reason, even though he just sang a number.)
- The choice of whether to put Karen or Ivy into the show honestly might come down more to who fit into the costumes at this point than to who's better suited for the role. Ivy keeps saying she knows it from the workshop, but by now she'd have to learn almost as much. I know the money and the gossip are concerns, but just cancel the damn preview! Isn't it worse to rush and have it go badly?
- Karen's insane put-in rehearsal is a great example of the dramatic and the real being one in the same. Derek telling the other actors to shove her where she needs to be is totally realistic.
- I love seeing Karen and the wardrobe crew rehearsing her quick change. The moment when Derek gives her shit and she snaps back at him is one I've seen happen many times. You have to rehearse these things! Just because he can't see it doesn't mean it's not being worked on, and he hates that.
- But for real, just cancel the preview and alter the damn costumes! Plus, nothing looked like it was rigged for quick-change. For the record, this is what an actual quick-change looks like (after lots of practice, I'm sure). Note the no-at-all-period zippers and snaps. Faking it, people!
- Karen getting "Don't Forget Me" AT CURTAIN and not only memorizing it but it being fully orchestrated is absurd, of course, but I'll allow it because we're watching a musical too, and disbelief is happily suspended.